GERRY BRAUN | ONLY IN SAN DIEGOBooze ban at beaches offers up two images

August 10, 2008

It's a paradox that's been applied to a glass of water, to a keg of beer, and now to San Diego's beaches.

Some people will see them as half-full, others as half-empty.

Just last month we celebrated the Fourth of July, a day when our beaches usually look like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Yet in this, the Year of the Booze Ban, they were unexpectedly subdued. You could see the sand. You could see the ocean. You could walk in a straight line – with no booze, everyone could – directly from your towel into the surf.

“In previous years on the Fourth of July, you couldn't get to the water if you were on fire,” one beach-area businesswoman told me.

By all accounts, the crowds were down, but the family-friendly fun factor was up.

What's not to like?

For an answer, I sought out Jeremy Malecha, a leader of Free P.B., a group that opposed the one-year ban and now hopes for the defeat of a November ballot measure making it permanent.

Malecha wasted no time in pinpointing the problem: It's all that empty sand. If people don't want to go to the beach in the middle of summer, he said, we must have a problem.

Binge-drinking idiots accounted for only a fraction of the no-shows, according to Malecha's math, as did tourists who stayed at home because the oil industry is engrossed in a binge of its own.

To Malecha, those empty stretches of sand represented thousands of tax-paying San Diegans for whom a day at the beach lost its luster once they couldn't enjoy it with a cold beer, sipped responsibly.

“Nobody has a problem, allegedly, with the guy who comes down, drinks a beer and watches his kids play in the surf,” Malecha pointed out.

Yet on the Fourth – “traditionally a drinking holiday” – that guy and his kids were disenfranchised, banished to a backyard where the adults drank their beers in the pool, wearing flotation devices that looked like striped sea horses.

Malecha creates a compelling image – I added the sea horse part – and is quick to broaden its scope to take in the specter of lost civil liberties and of the many being punished for the sins of a few.

But his image isn't the one that will dominate the debate this fall, when San Diegans vote on the booze ban.

The second: The Labor Day melee of 2007. Drunken hooligans in swimsuits. Police in riot gear. Wild-eyed families fleeing the scene. In the background: The theme from “Jaws.”

When San Diegans are asked if they want to revert to the past, their answer will be a resounding no.

We're a few weeks away from the anniversary of the Labor Day melee, that clarifying moment when public opinion turned against alcohol on the beach, and its ripple keeps growing wider.

First San Diego outlawed booze on its beaches and bays and parks, then nearby cities followed suit, fearing the problem would migrate their way.

Some beach-area business owners say they're being hurt by the changing demographics, and an evolution may be under way. If a bar shuts down, is that a glass that's half-full or half-empty? Answers will vary.

Homeless alcoholics, feeling unwelcome on the sand, have moved inland. One may be appearing near you soon. Holiday house parties have increased, as the police chief predicted they would, and beach-area drunken-driving arrests are rising. Evidence of increased enforcement or increased bar-hopping? It's your call.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people have been ticketed for drinking on the beach, many of them law-abiding citizens who never thought they were part of the problem until a cop told them otherwise.

And what's become of the Labor Day rioters, those inebriated nitwits who stampeded around the beach like a public-service announcement against mad cow disease?

Of the 15 people arrested that day, none was sentenced to jail time.

Seven pleaded guilty to offenses such as obstructing an officer, assaulting an officer or participating in a riot. They paid fines and got probation. One case remains open, but no charges were filed against the other seven. In five instances, no arrest report was even made.

I asked Christopher Morris, who runs the criminal division in the City Attorney's Office, how you can be arrested without a police officer making an arrest report.

“They probably cried,” he said of the arrestees. “That usually works for me.”

Their exploits live on, though.

Now the only way to drink legally on the beach is to get a special-use permit, which requires a $150 fee and $1 million in liability insurance. If your party is big enough, you have to hire security guards, too.

Then you get to construct a “beer garden” in one of four city-approved configurations. The walls must be at least 6 feet high and the preferred material is chain-link fencing, so police can see inside and beverages can't be smuggled outside.

That's another paradox for you: The criminals walk free while the law-abiding are confined in cages.